All posts by Duf

I have been wanting to lose the same three or four pounds for most of this year and haven’t been successful in doing so. Although I am still pretty active with going to the gym three times a week, playing pickleball several times a week and even volleyball if my body allows it, I still have not been able to keep my weight around 180lbs like I would prefer. It’s funny/odd, last year I had an issue keeping my weight up above 180.

I have done three fasting sessions so far and although they have a number of benefits, lasting weight loss hasn’t been one of them. I used to do at least one hard cardio session per week that ran 30-60 minutes. That used to be running and then later it became road biking but since I moved that fell off my routine. Although my heart rate can get up there playing pickleball or volleyball, it’s not the same.

Then of course we have the logical cause that I normally try to avoid thinking about, I’m just getting older. As you age your metabolism slows, it becomes harder to maintain muscle and weight gain is a pretty common side effect. However if you know me, you know I am not the type to just accept that.

One of the things I am trying to do is make sure I am going to bed with a little twinge of hunger in my stomach. Going to bed after still feeling the effects of a dinner that was too much is not a good thing. I realized that I was either eating more than I should or later than I should so I am trying to modify that. My other historical weakness has been a sweet tooth. It’s well documented the negative impacts excessive sugar has on your body in a number of ways. I have been making an effort to be more aware of my sugar consumption and moderate it.

I’m down a couple pounds since I started trying to enforce these modifications to my routine. As is the case in most things, consistency is the most vital part of any health and wellness plan.

My incision in my head is healing well although it still looks pretty nasty. The stitches come out Monday but I am feeling tempted to try a pickleball session tomorrow to see how it goes. I have been going to the gym this week but avoiding weight training which could potentially put pressure on the wound. I instead have been sticking to stretching, light calisthenics and light cardio. I may try a few push ups and/or pull ups today to see how it feels.

I took Elsa for her annual exam yesterday. While I was there I got a couple meds she takes as well but I still had sticker shock with the total bill of $800 plus. A lot of the costs are associated with labs that are done but my god, it’s sort of ridiculous. The good news is Elsa appears to be about as healthy as a 10 year old dog can be.

Last night I had to fix issues with all three of my printers. The A1 had an extruder jam that I was able to clear pretty easily by taking off the feed tubes, heating the hot end and then using my unclogger tool to force the filament through. When this happened the first time months ago that was how I broke the filament sensor. I now know how to address the issue without collateral damage, thankfully.

The X1C had a piece of filament that broke off inside the PTFE tube in the guts of the AMS 2. It was a bit of a pain getting that tube released to remove the filament but I got it. Finally the P1S was driving me nuts because the roll of white filament I was using was a non-Bambu spool. It would keep binding on me, requiring me to intervene. Once the print on it finished I was done using that spool in the AMS. The good news is I came up with three very cool dinosaur prints.

Last night I actually played some retail WoW for the first time in months. I had a small blitz of play a few months back where I got all of my characters to level 70, the starting level for the new expansion but I never played any of the expansion itself. It’s not really new anymore either as we are at the second major patch release. Anyway there have been a bunch of changes so the first 20 minutes was just me getting my hunter character playable again and figuring out how stuff now works. I am still in the dark about many things and my character felt pretty weak but I was able to at least gain a level. We will see how much time I have to invest in my 20 year old game.

I had a weekend where there was a goal of not doing activities that kept me out in the sun or caused a significant amount of exertion due to the large incision I have in my head. Well the sun avoidance is more of a side effect of the antibiotic they have me on which has a side effect of making me very reactive to sun exposure.

I knocked out a number of projects on Saturday including installing a Panda Status RGB indicator which mounts onto the heat bed of my P1S. It gives you information about a print with a quick glance. It’s a feature that is included with the H2D printer. The P1S now is in it’s final form as far as I am concerned. Even though the X1C is a higher end printer with more features I find myself printing more on the P1S currently.

I also got around to installing a new desktop mic on my computer. I bought it a couple weeks ago, a Steelseries Alias. The Yeti Blue mic I was using is 6-7 years old . I look forward to trying it out on my next live stream broadcast.

Sunday morning I did a quick 1 mile walk on the beach right around sunrise to avoid significant sun exposure. I attended to small things around my place during the day but it was a pretty lazy affair by my standards. I finally completed watching the four seasons of Last Ship, a show I never heard about during it’s original run that started in 2014. It ironically depicted almost a COVID like reality although it was a more deadly example that kills 5 billion people. I found it entertaining although things got increasingly silly as each season progressed. I now can see what else is out there as I felt obligated to see the series through to its completion.

So I went through the day yesterday taking a couple rounds of Advil to knock down the consistent pain in the area where the incision/stitches are on my head which grew as the numbing from the procedure wore off. However even a day later there are parts of my head that are numb. The top of my head on the side where the surgery occurred still feels completely numb. I am not sure if this is just the numbing solution moving to other areas temporarily or something else. I will give it a day or two before I have any significant concern. It was a rather large area that was cut out and they injected me with a lot of the numbing shots, probably the most I ever received.

Walking around last night and this morning I noticed something else. The pain I was feeling in my right leg/knee has vanished. Suddenly I feel fine where as prior to the surgery I was having consistent knee/leg pain for two weeks. Do I have any idea why having skin cancer surgery on my face would make my problematic knee suddenly feel better? Nope but I’m not complaining.

This weekend any athletic competition or hard physical labor is off the table but I have a list of other to do’s floating around in my head that should keep me busy enough.

Those of you paying attention will remember that I had spent the greater part of three weeks 3D printing and constructing a sliding drawer shelf to allow me to hook multiple AMS units up to one of my 3D printers. I spent over $75 on filament and associated hardware for the project. However when it was complete I realized that it did not fit on top of the printer as I hoped. Instead I jammed it into the precious little space I have on that workbench which made everything seem very crowded and difficult to work on a printer if need be.

Ironically as I was finishing up that project a well known Bambu accessory maker announced their Panda Perch which allows you to put two AMS units side by side on top of a P1S or X1C printer. So despite all of the effort and expense I had already put into building the shelf, I bought the perch as it will logistically work out better for me.

Assembling the unit took some time and the instructions left something to be desired. However the finished product felt very sturdy and fit on top of the printer perfectly. The second AMS unit that came with the used X1C I bought does not work 100%. In my initial testing two of the four spool locations seem to not detect when filament is loaded. Down the road I will probably buy another AMS 2 unit to address the issue. Bottom line is the new set up does what I want it to do while allowing me to regain some bench space in the process. Now I just have to figure out where/how I can utilize the shelf I built.

Today I had yet another skin cancer surgery. This area was on the large side, resulting in a two and a half inch incision. The area is big because I was putting it off. I first noticed the problem area at least 9 months ago and just didn’t feel like getting it addressed. Truth is if I would have acted sooner the carnage could have been much less as skin cancer will just continue to spread if left alone.

I have about a week of not doing anything that resembles exertion as well as needing to complete a cycle of antibiotics. It’s hard to describe the sensation of having your skin pulled tight and laced up. I guess feeling like a football might be the closest imagery I can offer. If you can avoid it, you should.

I received an email notification from FPL about my upcoming power bill this month. It was the highest it’s ever been, just under $300. Sure it’s been a very hot July but still, this was significantly more than I expected. Last night I was adjusting the curtains that cover the slider in my bedroom. As I did so I glanced at the opening and noticed a gap of at least 1/4″. I tried closing the door but the lock was stopping it from closing. Further investigation revealed the door was not on the track correctly which was causing the misalignment.

I aligned the door correctly on the track and then was able to close it fully. I realized that more than likely this opening has been present since the house was cleaned over two weeks ago resulting in a constant stream of cooled air flowing out of the house during that time period. The high electricity bill suddenly made a lot more sense. When the cleaning ladies visit I often have to set certain things back as they were afterward. I now added make sure the doors are closed correctly to that list.

I saw Fantastic Four last night. I heard more positive reviews of it than Superman which is a good thing. I found the movie not bad but on the Marvel scale it was middle of the pack, at best, for me. I found myself walking out of there genuinely aggravated when I stayed all the way to the end to view the post credit scene. I heard it was a big deal. Unless I missed something it was just fluff that revealed nothing significant. I’d give the movie a B+ or B. At least it’s better than Superman.

I started the weekend with a nice two mile walk on the beach Saturday morning. Getting out of bed relatively early is the difficult part of that activity. Once your feet are out walking by the water’s edge and you are immersed in the sounds and sensations that effort feels well worth it.

Later Saturday I had my yard guy knock down a bunch of low hanging branches on a couple of my oak trees. It was so hot and humid I felt bad for even requesting that he do the task for me although of course I am paying him extra to do so. I thought to myself how if the clock was turned back 10 years I would have been out there struggling to find a way to do the work myself.

I had a few things around the house I worked on during the afternoon. I ran a new 50 foot ethernet cable around the perimeter of the office to connect to my cable modem. Since a surge went through the old cable and the retaining clips were broken on it as well it seemed like a fresh CAT 6 cable made sense. I also did some minor organizing and straightening of the room while I had it sort of pulled apart, an effort that will continue over the upcoming weeks. That room just has a bunch of stuff in it that I really do not need anymore.

My Sunday involved a lot of time behind the wheel of the Tesla driving up to Brooksville Florida and back, a trip that takes between six and seven hours. When I got home I felt like I wanted to get some movement in so I went to the fitness center at my work to get 30 minutes of cross trainer cardio in. It felt good to sweat but when I got home later and cooled down my right leg/knee was not feeling like it enjoyed the activity with pain and stiffness being my reward.

I last minute decided to do a live stream Sunday night, the first one in exactly a month. It was primarily about a new huge wheel that was announced with an equally huge price of $5000. There was a time where I would have felt very excited and motivated to try to buy a wheel like this but that time has come and gone. Still it was fun to talk about it and other things for roughly two hours.

This week I have another MOHS skin cancer procedure done on a spot on my right forehead up by the hair line. I had a similar spot cut out on the left side several years ago. I can’t wait…

I was surprised when the Xfinity tech showed up in the first 15 minutes of the two hour arrival window to address my lack of internet connectivity. He was a very nice young guy named Matt. I took him into my office to show him the cable modem. He stopped as he entered the room, impressed with everything that was going on in there. He said it was one of the coolest set ups he has seen. He asked if I was a streamer. I told him I sort of was. I gave him my EUC Army YouTube channel to peruse if he wanted to.

He said there was no signal coming into the house. He said the port on the block coming into the house was bad as well as the buried coax cable. He attached me to a different port, ran a temporary above ground cable and replaced the grounding block on the house as well. My modem showed an all is well white light afterward. Matt said a bury crew will be back in 3-5 days to install a new buried line inside of conduit.

When I went back inside the various wi-fi connected devices had returned to life however my computer which is hard wired did not connect to the internet. Upon investigation it appears that the USB 3.0 ethernet adapter I was using was damaged during the spike. I ran to Walmart to try to grab another one but all they had were USB wifi adapters so I grabbed one of those instead as well as a new 50 foot ethernet cable. I used the wifi adapter to get me back online but I ordered a new USB Ethernet adapter on Amazon. My plan is to replace the existing ethernet cable to get my hard wired connection reestablished which provides the most consistent speed. It felt good to be plugged back in.

Last night at home I was working on my computer. Some storms were rolling through but any thunder I heard sounded like it was pretty far off. Then it happened. Out the window facing the back yard there was an intense white flash coinciding instantly with deafening sound. Two of my three computer screens went black. The one that remained on had a distorted version of my desktop background on it.

Elsa immediately freaked out and started to try to wedge herself past my legs/feet and behind the desk which I told her repeatedly NO. She ignored me and continued to try. I wound up having to grab her by the waist and pull her out, she refused to listen. The area behind my desk has a lot of wires for the various equipment I have there, it is not a dog safe environment. Her refusal to listen to me really got me angry, despite knowing she was just scared. She wound up going into the guest bathroom tub, another safe zone.

So I look at my cable modem and see it flashing amber, indicating it was not connected. I power cycled it but I did so knowing it would not help. It seemed clear that the strike got into the coax cable and either damaged the modem or something upstream of it. When I checked it appeared the outage was local to me so I have a tech scheduled to come out this afternoon to hopefully get me reconnected. I am hoping the surge did not damage components in my computer as it is hard wired to the cable modem.

Spending the rest of the night without internet was a reminder of just how integrated it has become into life although I was able to flip my phone to cellular data to stay in the loop somewhat. My home which is filled with various “smart” devices suddenly became very, very dumb. I did some 3D printing projects and read some 6 year old Make magazines I had in the nightstand until I fell asleep. It was fine. Just like with food, internet fasting now and then is probably not a bad thing.

Saturday morning I heading out to the range for my second shooting session. I brought my Dagger 19 9MM handgun that I bought since the last time I shot. My good buddy Juan came this time which added to the fun.

I enjoy shooting rifles with a scope much more the handguns. My accuracy with hand guns is not good. With a rifle I can hit targets from 100 meters away. It was once again very warm and humid but a fun couple hours. Last week I ordered a Panzer 12 gauge shotgun to round out my collection, I should be good to go with my arsenal for the foreseeable future.

My right knee that I aggravated playing volleyball is slowly improving. I didn’t play any pickleball this weekend which was probably a good idea. I will have to see how it is by Wednesday when my weekly athletic activities normally begin.

I almost am done with my AMS rack project. I have it fully assembled after roughly three weeks of off and on printing. The rack uses threaded brass inserts that are melted into the structure, the first time I have ever tried such a thing. There are soft close drawer slides installed as well.

When I started this it was with the idea that I would mount this rack on top of either my P1S or X1C printer to save bench space. When I went to place the rack on top of the P1S I immediately realized it was too big to go there. When I went back and reviewed the plans I did see a picture of it on top of a Bambu printer, however it was the the new large format H2D which is significantly bigger. I could only laugh at my stupidity but I was able to accommodate the rack next to the printer instead of on top. I need a couple components to successfully connect both AMS units to the printer which I hope to receive this week. Once I do printing a model with up to 8 colors will be a reality.